


Pinball Machine

by hanwritessolo



Series: Objects of Mass Destruction and Affection [1]
Category: Final Fantasy XV
Genre: Angst, Angst and Hurt/Comfort, F/M, M/M, Reader-Insert
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-04-08
Updated: 2018-04-08
Packaged: 2019-04-20 10:13:47
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 696
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14258772
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/hanwritessolo/pseuds/hanwritessolo
Summary: The trick to getting over a royal ex-boyfriend is to probably not spend time in a place where he frequents the most.





	Pinball Machine

_Game over._

The music downplays to a depressing tune, and your fingers mindlessly scoop out another coin in your pocket to restart the game. Amidst the eerie dimness in this particularly desolate Kenny Crow’s branch, your face is bathed in the paling fluorescent lights radiating from the machine’s surface, eyebrows knitted and mouth pressed to a frightening concentration.

You know how the gameplay works. In fact, you have mastered each maneuver and technique of this game—Justice Monsters it was called—after having played it close to a hundred times. You even grew to love it dearly, much like every other video game you learned how to play, all thanks to Noctis.

But after ten miserable rounds and ten bucks down the drain, your hands still twitch at the buttons. It misses a beat, a second, a shot, each zing and zap of the tiny fireball fails to earn a score. There are continents drifting away at the tip of your fingertips, and your hands tremble as if it slowly forgets how to hold itself together. As if it only remembers the moment you held Noctis’s hands when he told you he’s sorry. And when you asked him what’s wrong, he only told you that he loves you, that you are the love of his life, and that he is going to get married.

Just not to you.

In life, you know how the gameplay works. For starters, you should not have fallen in love with a prince, and a prince should not have fallen in love with you. But you know how it is with life’s sick sense of humor, as if the universe just glitched to align both of your stars that were not even meant to be in proximity with each other’s orbit in the first place.

So when he stared back at you without another word, you did not beg. You did not grovel.

You answered him with silence and walked away.

So now, your silence shatters and your feelings resurface like a tidal wave ready to wash you away. You curl and tighten your hands into balled fists preparing for impact, but they turn into a pair of wrecking steel mashing the controls with a blend of unabashed fury and aching grief. The man behind the counter calls out to you and asks if you are okay, which you hope you can answer without crying even harder, so you only nod without even giving him a look. Because here you are, bashing each button, forcing each shot to score, shaking and bawling and choking on a sob as the whimsical electric guitar riffs of the game swells in the background. Who even cries in front of arcade games, anyway? Certainly not people who have committed a grave mistake of falling in love with a person of royalty. Maybe there have been others before you who have wept in front of video games under perfectly acceptable reasons, but now, your misery does not love company, it does not know rational thought, and it only wants your full and undivided attention until you are smothered.

Luckily, your attention draws away when a voice sneaks up behind you.

“You’re going to break that thing.”

You turn around and you see Noctis, and you hope to any higher being that this is the work of your wretched agony pulling tricks with your brain.

But it isn’t.

Not when you can see his face as clear as day.

“I just… I can’t fucking win this thing,” you hiccup your irrelevant pinball complaint, still breathless under your own ocean of tears. “It’s stupid that I’m losing this game _and_ I’m already losing you, I’m on a fucking losing streak—”

“You’re not losing me,” Noctis pulls you close, and you relent under his touch. He presses a kiss on your forehead as he whispers, “We’ll find a way around this. And you’ll always have me, one way or another. Just... let me be with you. Please.”

Noctis spills your name in tears, and you let his voice and the sound of his heartbeat drown out all the buzzing noise, even for a while, even for a little longer.

 


End file.
